Skeletal remains of unborn baby removed from woman - after 36 YEARS

Jyoti Kumar is believed to have had the world's longest ever ectopic pregnancy

Unbelievable: This skeleton of an unborn baby was removed after decades inside the mother

A woman has had her unborn baby's skeleton removed from her body - 36 YEARS after she concieved.

Jyoti Kumar, from Madhya Pradesh in central India, is believed to have had the world's longest ever ectopic pregnancy.

An eptopic pregnancy is one where the foetus develops outside of the womb, which can have life threatening consequences for mother and child.

Mrs Kumar was 24-years-old in 1978 when she was told that the baby had little chance of survival after it was found to be growing outside the uterus.

Petrified at the thought of an operation, she had fled and sought treatment for the pain had a small clinic.

After a few months she said it gone away and was convinced the problem had been solved.

City Hospital / Cover Asia Press

Unbelievable Discovery: This skeleton was found inside the mother

But decades years later and now in her early 60s, she visited doctors at the NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences (NKPSIMS) in the central Indian city of Nagpur.

Suffering from health problems and constant pain in her stomach area, she was given the amazing news the bones of the unborn child were still inside her.

There a team of surgeons including Dr Mohammad Yunus Shah had operated to remove them.

He said: "She said the pain had been consistent over the last two months and we found a lump on the lower right side of her abdomen, and feared it was cancer.

"The presence of a lump was confirmed by sonography. A CT scan then revealed that the lump was made of hard, calcified matter. But it was only after the patient underwent an MRI that we could make out that the mass was in fact a child's skeleton."

He said that his team had searched for medical literature on similar cases and found a Belgian woman who had retained the remains of an ectopic pregnancy for 18 years, the longest period they could find on record.

He added: "We believe this could be the longest case on record. We asked for a detailed medical history and all we could get was that the patient's brother told us that in 1978 she was pregnant and had some complications.

City Hospital / Cover Asia Press

Horrifying Scan: A scan showed the foetus outside of the womb

"She apparently knew that the baby had died and that she would need an operation, and we gathered she got scared at the prospect of surgery and so went away to her village without undergoing the operation."

What the team found after operating on the woman was a mass containing a matured skeleton encapsulated in a calcified sac.

This mass was found between the uterus, the intestines and urinary bladder, densely stuck to all the organs.

"The amniotic fluid that protects the foetus might have been absorbed and the soft tissues liquefied over time with only a bag of bones with some fluid remaining.

"For the last few months, the patient was experiencing pain and urinary problems with fever," said Dr Shah.

He said this was happening as the mass was squeezing the urinary system, meaning her kidneys weren't working properly.